Carmine Marceno

A video, which can be seen here, shows Lee County Sheriff Carmine Marceno driving south on six-lane South Tamiami Trail in a black Lamborghini Huracan convertible with the top down on a sunny day in Estero. Shooting the video is Marceno’s former friend, Bonita Springs jeweler Ken Romano, who drives in the lane to the right of the sheriff in the same direction. A brief race begins at Romano’s prompting.

When Lee County Undersheriff John Holloway’s daughter Morgan and her fiance Joe Trubilla posted a wedding registry on October 21, 2022, they appealed to friends and relatives for spa dates, a cruise, and other presents before their March 2023 wedding.But it was her father’s law enforcement agency that provided perhaps the biggest gift of all: a $5,000-per-month Lee County Sheriff’s Office consulting contract for Trubilla to run a youth boxing program.

As he faces a federal corruption investigation and also floats a potential run for Congress, the last thing Lee County Sheriff Carmine Marceno needs to do is upset his supposed allies in the Republican Party.But that may happen as a result of the surfacing of insulting and profanity-riddled audio recordings of Marceno talking about Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and first lady Casey DeSantis — as well as presidential daughter Ivanka Trump — obtained by the Florida Trident.

For Lee County Undersheriff John Holloway, the sheriff’s office is a family business.As if Holloway’s $280,000 public salary as second-in-command under embattled Sheriff Carmine Marceno weren’t enough, now his wife, lawyer Kathleen Holloway, has been added to the Lee County Sheriff’s Office payroll at $155,000 a year, bringing the couple’s total take from the agency to more than $430,000 annually, internal LCSO documents show.State ethics law forbids public officials like John Holloway from not only hiring relatives but also from advocating for relatives to be hired at their own agencies. The sheriff’s office maintains it wasn’t the undersheriff but Marceno himself who “recruited” Kathleen Holloway after an as yet unnamed outside law firm determined the hiring didn’t pose a legal issue for the undersheriff.

In the spring of 2023, Cape Coral resident Tammy King went to a doctor’s office in nearby St. James City, hoping to refill her prescriptions for medication to treat her ADHD. Instead she was roughed up by Lee County sheriff’s deputies and wrongfully forced into a mental facility, according to a federal lawsuit filed on her behalf.

In a social media conversation Tuesday afternoon, Lee County Sheriff Carmine Marceno discussed the state of the agency, highlighting what he described as the agency's accomplishments. In the fifteen-minute exchange, he mentioned next to nothing about an ongoing FBI investigation.

If Lee County Sheriff Carmine Marceno were to leave or be removed from office, there are lawmen who could be considered frontrunners to replace him.

uring his 2024 campaign, Hillsborough County Sheriff Chad Chronister received $50,000 from what might seem an unlikely source – a political committee tied to embattled Lee County Sheriff Carmine Marceno, who is now the subject of a federal grand jury investigation into alleged money laundering and other crimes.Chronister, who was nominated by President-Elect Donald Trump to head the DEA last week before quickly dropping out, obtained the money from the Friends of Carmine Marceno political committee despite the fact he had little opposition to his re-election. At the time of the donation, his only opponent was Democrat Gary Pruitt, who in 2020 raised little money and lost to Chronister by 19 points. Ultimately, Pruitt did not qualify and Chronister ran unopposed.So why the large donation?

A run-in at the Luminary Hotel put an honorary deputy's badge to the test for a friend of Sheriff Carmine Marceno.

Embattled Lee County Sheriff Carmine Marceno has been captured in video recordings accepting a stack of cash from the same “ghost employee” who has claimed the two men were involved in a kickback scheme involving sheriff’s office funds paid to Marceno’s father.The video shows Marceno receiving what appears to be a thick stack of hundred-dollar bills from jeweler Ken Romano, who is said to be cooperating in an FBI investigation of the sheriff.